Socialism
Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.[1][2][3]

In a socialist economic system, production is carried out by a public association of producers to directly produce use-values (instead of exchange-values), through coordinated planning of investment decisions, distribution of surplus, and the use of the means of production. Socialism is a set of social and economic arrangements based on a post-monetary system of calculation, such as labour time, energy units or calculation-in-kind.[4]

Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society.[5] They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. They argue that this creates an unequal society that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential,[6] and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.[7] Socialists characterise full socialism as a society no longer based on coercive wage-labour, organized on the basis of relatively equal power-relations and adhocracy rather than hierarchical, bureaucratic forms of organization in the productive sphere. Reformists and revolutionary socialists disagree on how a socialist economy should be established.

Modern socialism originated in the late 18th-century intellectual and working class political movement that criticised the effects of industrialisation and private ownership on society. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen (1771–1858), tried to found self-sustaining communes by secession from a capitalist society. Henri de Saint Simon (1760–1825), who coined the term socialisme, advocated technocracy and industrial planning.[8] Saint-Simon, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx advocated the creation of a society that allows for the widespread application of modern technology to rationalise economic activity by eliminating the anarchy of capitalist production.[9][10] They argued that this would allow for economic output (or surplus value) and power to be distributed based on the amount of work expended in production.

Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production).[11]

Libertarian socialists (including social anarchists and libertarian Marxists) reject state control and ownership of the economy altogether, and advocate direct collective ownership of the means of production via co-operative workers' councils and workplace democracy.

Contemporary social democrats propose selective nationalisation of key national industries in mixed economies, while maintaining private ownership of capital and private business enterprise.

Given the above we a loooong ways from socialism. As used by many on the far right socialism means programs like Social Security. Many use the term like some sort of boogie man. But I see very little reason to think Obama is or wants to be a socialist. If he did the government would have retained ownership in all the companies they bailed out. Instead we have systematically divested ourselves of those companies.

Funny how many who decry our inexprable slide toward socialism sure don’t want their SS or Medicare cut.